Bloomberg Predicts EVs Cheaper than IC Engine Cars Within 10 Years (computerworld.com)

Lucas123 writes: With the price of lithium-ion batteries continuing to plummet, already dropping 65% since 2010, electric vehicles will become cheaper to own by the mid-2020s, according to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The report also forecasts that sales of EVs will hit 41 million by 2040, up from 462,000 in 2015. By 2040, EVs will make up 35% of new light-duty vehicle sales, even if the price of crude oil goes back up from $33 today to $70 in the future. The adoption of EVs will displace about 13 million barrels of oil per day by 2040, when the clean-energy cars represent about one-quarter of cars on the road.

Comments

Peak battery

[ickleberry]

EV batteries last a couple of thousand cycles at the most. Which might be 5 or 10 years worth of driving. After that they are recycled into stainless steel pans and other items that aren't batteries. It seems that Lithium ion batteries are harder to recycle back into batteries than for example lead acid or nickel iron (both impractical for powering cars).

So instead of eating into the world's supply of hydrocarbons we're eating into the world's supply of Lithium and a couple of other elements that there isn't all that much of once you start producing 10s of millions of cars. Great progress.

Of course there are ways of getting these metals in plentiful supply from seawater, asteroids and other sources but as with super-efficient solar panels, they're always 10 years away.

Re:Peak battery

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm the Lithium is recycled. It comes down to the economics between cost of cycling compared to cost of getting it out of the ground.

Tesla seem adamant that recycling will end up cheaper source of lithium than mining will.

Also Lithium isn't the cost inhibitor and never has been. Lithium has gotten way more expensive in recent years, while lithium batteries have dropped massively in price. The lithium itself is a very minor part of the cost.

There are only 10kg of lithium in a big car battery, there are 22 million kg's of known lithium reserves. I doupt there will be a problem with lithium shortage for a long time.

Re:Peak battery

[ShanghaiBill]

So you'll limit the car pool to 2 millions car ?

No. GP is mistaken. There are not 22 million kg, there are ~22 million metric tons, or a thousand times as much. So the limit would be 2 billion cars. But there is an additional 230 billion metric tons of lithium in the ocean, enough for 20 trillion cars.

Re:Peak battery

[ShanghaiBill]

Huh, never realised Li was so rare. That "not made directly by stars" line in the wiki entry seems a bit suspect, though. Strains belief that at no point in the core of a star, a He ever captures a neutron or proton or deuteron.

The problem is that lithium is both rarely produced, and rapidly consumed. Lithium can absorb neutrons, and can also absorb protons (Li7 + H = 2He4). Lithium reacts so easily that it is used as a major component in thermonuclear weapons. When a star forms, Lithium is one of the first elements consumed and depleted from the core. Citation: Lithium burning.

Re:Peak battery

[AmiMoJo]

Maths fail.

The Panasonic cells used in Tesla batteries are rated for 3000 cycles (80% capacity remaining). A full charge gives you 300 miles range. 3000x300 = 900,000 miles, or about 3x what a modern petrol engine can do before it needs replacing.

Tesla have actually tested up to 750,000 miles with 86% capacity remaining, as you would expect based on the maths. Similarly, taxi companies running Nissan Leafs at 150,000 miles are seeing >90% capacity remaining, as expected.

Chances are that most EV batteries will outlast the car by a long way, and find use as home backup/solar smoothing packs or replacements in other vehicles. Eventually they will be recycled, because they are very recyclable.

Scary Lithium-Ion batteries!

[dAzED1]

Went to Catalina Island for a few days this week and on the way there, saw a sign that is repeated on this website: "Due to the lithium ion batteries Hoverboards are ILLEGAL to transport upon Catalina Express." Disregarding cameras, cell phones, watches, pacemakers, blah small electronics etc, anyone who has been to Catalina knows cars are scarce there (it's a 30 year waiting list to get a car permit) and everyone drives golf carts - which more and more use large lithium ion batteries now. I thought the sign to be really funny, yet sad (obviously). Hoverboards aren't banned because of the lithium-ion batteries, they're banned because they're 90degrees off and they're not hovering. Errr...they're banned because they were very cheaply manufactured, and have safety problems.

Re:Scary Lithium-Ion batteries!

[rahvin112]

The energy storage they talk about with these batteries is not what you think. The batteries are expected to have 80% of their capacity remaining, and they are typically placed in shipping containers and hooked up to large industrial or commercial buildings. There is NO company planning to recycle batteries into consumer homes. Your information is very faulty.

Re:I hope so

[DogDude]

I'm a libertarian, who will most likely vote for Trump

Fuck you, asshole.

Re: Li-On batteries

[Chuq]

I'm just glad a petrol powered car has never caught fire before.

Already cheaper, if you like fast cars. . .

[Idou]

The Nissan Leaf is one of the cheapest cars you can get that can blow away most other cars when accelerating from 0 to "legal in-town speed."

If your commute involves stop lights and changing lanes, it is super fun to drive and a bargain. The general public still seems oblivious to its acceleration, which adds to the fun when you quietly blow past them when they try to cut you off in a "funny looking car" (while their ICE wails in futile protest. . .)

Re:Already cheaper, if you like fast cars. . .

[ncy]

... Leaf ... that can blow away ...

i see what you did there lol

Re:what point? Libertarians vote fasist

[PopeRatzo]

Trump is just the outcome of leftist policies

You've gotta admit, people who will blame absolutely anything and everything wrong in their lives on Obama and the SJWs are nothing if not consistent.

"I have to vote for the fascist flim-flam man, because Obama and the SJWs have just pushed me too far"

There must be some small part of you that feels ashamed.

Re: Will EVs be popular in 10 years?

[mspohr]

I've taken a few multi thousand mile trips in my Tesla at a total cost of $4 for electricity. Are you telling me that this was all a dream and the thousands of worldwide Supercharger stations don't exist?

Re:Li-On batteries

[Dutch Gun]

Lot's of Li-powered cars already have. I don't understand why you Republicans hide the truth about how dangerous they are. Your kind puts profit ahead of people.

Okay, as a Republican, I'm sort of torn on this. Yes, I want the environment to be destroyed and for the world to choke in smog, but I also want to lovingly protect our billionaire businessmen and cartels who are producing these ultra-dangerous battery powered cars that may catch on fire. (nice!) The probably is that these things might inadvertently save the environment. (noooooooo!)

Maybe we can figure out a way for these electric cars to burn oil in some secondary capacity... Then they'd be perfect!

Re:what point? Libertarians vote fasist

[PopeRatzo]

However, with the constant childish name-calling, spite-filled, intolerant, unadulterated hate that comes from the extreme left-wing in this country, I would never ever identify myself as a "progressive". What the left has become is to spit in the face of what true liberalism is about and many rational nominally left leaning people don't want anything to do with it.

There's a difference between those excellent points and blaming "Obama and the SJWs" for the milk going bad.

Donald Trump is not the outcome of leftist policies. He's the result of a major political party riding the tiger of talk radio shock jocks who are all trying to be more horrible than the next one and calling it "talking tough". It's the result of the Southern Strategy, it's the result of creating a victim mentality among white working class people, convincing them that they're being oppressed. It's the result of a cheapening of discourse and the stoking of irrational fears - of xenophobia and plain, old bigotry. It's the result of the "bully effect", where weak-minded people feel empathy toward the strong papa-figure, as long as he sounds sufficiently like a hard-ass. It's the result of a fascism that's been dormant in the US for over a century and a half and really started to flower in 1980. The 20th century was stained with rivers of blood from what happens when that sort of ugliness takes hold in a portion of a society.

Don't blame some stupid college kids or feminists for the rise of the first candidate in decades that's been embraced by actual white supremacists and Nazis.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-...

Re: Li-On batteries

[beelsebob]

They absolutely do try to put petrol car fires out, because they melt the tarmac underneath, and end up needing the road to be resurfaced if they don't get put out. They're relatively easy to put out - just need to throw foam at it.

Meanwhile, with lithium:
1) The fire burns hotter (around 600C rather than 450-500ish for petrol)
2) There's basically nothing you *can* put on it to put it out. Water will react with it, nitrogen will react with it, CO2 won't smother it, foam will react with it, dry powder can't smother it. About the only way you can put out a lithium fire is to bury it in sand, and that requires several dump trucks to somehow get near a 600C fire, and even then, you get a big blob of glass to clear up off a highway.

Re:what point? Libertarians vote fasist

[L. J. Beauregard]

You Hundred Percent Red Blood Americans have an entire cable news network dedicated to spreading your bullshit, and here you are upset about a few mouthy "SJWs"? How about you turn off Fox Propaganda and listen to what some actual "SJWs" have to say, instead of what Fox Propaganda says about them.

being told that the core tenants [sic] that America was founded on, that if you work hard, study, and better yourself you can get ahead, is total bullshit

One, it *is* bullshit. If hard work got you ahead, then everyone who toils behind a McDonald's counter would be a millionaire. And these days, studying and bettering yourself may only get you four years older and deeper in debt, assuming you can find the time after working two jobs for bullshit pay. Donald Trump got four bankruptcies. Many a former student would like just one.

Two, they're *tenets*, unless they're paying rent. And if you have to call something a tenet, it's probably bullshit.

Re: Li-On batteries

[thegarbz]

Class D fire extinguishers are holy shit toxic and very expensive.

So are standard hydrocarbon extinguishing foams. The ones that work anyway. The synthetic shit can't handle any level of alcohol including the 10% ethanol in your fuel tank.

Re: Li-On batteries

[thegarbz]

They're relatively easy to put out - just need to throw foam at it.

I see you've never put out a car fire before. The wonderful thing about car fires is that a car is a very three dimensional object. Foam's use case is to smother a fire and prevent oxygen which makes a car pretty much the worst case scenario for a foam extinguisher. Also given the length of time and amount of foam a typical extinguisher can expel you're left with only one choice in a fully engulfed car fire scenario: Call the fire brigade and have them bring foam injecting branches and them cover the car in a metric shitton of foam. Real bonus points if the mag wheels catch fire in the process.

The idea that a lithium battery with it's VERY limited amount of fuel is harder to put out than the petrol car fire is absurd. Lithium actually has the nice benefit that by the time the fire department shows up they can just put water on it. It burns very bloody quickly and while a litre of fuel in a softdrink bottle can burn for a good hour a lithium battery pack the same size will vapourise itself within a minute or two.

Oh and lithium can be put out with Class-D, but it has the same problem in a car as foam does. It doesn't work very well on 3D surfaces, and doesn't provide any cooling so fires will re-ignite themselves after you put them out when they come in contact with air again.